Theme: “In this together? Women’s movements and the politics of intersectionality”

Theories of intersectionality highlight the ways in which multiple axes of identity—including race, class, sexuality, age, disability, motherhood and so on—interact in many levels of women’s lives. These intersections of identity have long complicated any notion of feminist ‘sisterhood’ or solidarity, while simultaneously drawing attention to the multiple forms of discrimination and oppression that many women experience.

While these insights are not new, they continue to have significant implications for the way in which women engage in politics and activism, raising questions of voice, authority and legitimacy. This is true both in domestic and transnational contexts, in movement organizations and in online communities, and in politics that is focused on the state or constituted in social and cultural spaces.

The pre-conference workshop seeks to examine the ways in which intersectionality continues to influence women’s movement organizing. How does intersectionality create new voices and spaces? How is it imposing silences? How has intersectionality changed feminists’ relationship to each other? To states and institutions? How have these insights changed the way that women’s movements organize between the Global South and North?

If you are interested in submitting a paper or panels to this joint effort for the PRE-CONFERENCE only, please contact the relevant RCs at www.ipsa.org or the conveners: Melissa_haussman@carleton.ca (RC 19); Mariel Lucero (RC 7), rc07women@yahoo.com.ar; or Nancy Kwang Johnson (RC 52) at nancykwangjohnson@gmail.com.